I just shrugged off my shoulder when a man from Adarna Publications babbled about the value of reading to us children, how such a hobby will help develop our language skills, when I was in my elementary years.

I was not interested to that as much as I was excited when a group went to our room offering us to buy seeds of flowers and vegetables. My classmate was once dumbfounded by me buying seeds of carrots, cabbages and the like while she was holding in her hand a sachet containing sunflower seeds. I was just thrilled back then with the fact that carrots and cabbages do have seeds. I remember planting them in a pot, watering it, placing it away from my father’s chicken, and waking early every morning to see if the seedling has emerged. I was saddened that after more than a week of taking good care of it no greens came out. I had to get rid the impatient child in me who digs the soil after a day or two of planting the seeds, wondering if the seed is still there and no chicken has taken it out. But nothing came out still. I recall having that same feeling when a filthy kid neighbor of ours get the first yield of my tomato plant. I just saw it on the road outside of our house smashed, my poor tomato.

When I was little, my father used to store seeds of fruit-bearing trees and various vegetables in a container placed in our rack of groceries. He used to rant, why should I waste my time planting flowers and shrubs? Would it make my dinengdeng tastier? I always laugh imagining him saying that. I once dragged him out in our garden and had him name each seed I found in his container. Papa, was this a patani or a saluyot? My favorite was the Narra seed. To describe it, if I were watching Cinderella or Elang Uling, as NIck Joaquin calls it, I will say it is a castle with a moat but if I was in a kitchen watching my mother prepare our dinner, it is a wee meatball sandwiched in two siomai wrappers ready to be dropped on a boiling water to create a soup.

Now, back to the man from Adarna House, he handed me a list of books and some samples. I opened Ibong Adarna and there I was amazed with the pictures, with the colorful feathers of the ibong Adarna, but not with the content. I handed it back to him with an alibi that I had to ask my mother first if I really need to buy one or that we could not afford to even purchase a book.

I regretted that when I was in college taking a Language Development course. My professor once, when her coarse voice would not allow her to teach, brought her collection of children’s storybooks both by local and foreign authors and made us read whatever book we would like to throughout the entire class hours. I particularly like this one book because of its wordplay.

Another favorite would be Rusell Molina’sSandosenang Kuya whose seven-year-old narrator — I guess the child-narrator is of that age — tells about the brotherhood he had in an orphanage he used to live in and Ma. Corazon Remigio’sBruhahaha, Bruhihihihi where the child protagonist once put an upturned broom in their doorstep so that their “witch” neighbor will not be able to enter their house and get her.